The Halloween Documents

Introduction

Where will Microsoft try to drag you today?Do you really want to go there?

In the last week of October 1998, a confidential Microsoft memorandum
on Redmond's strategy against Linux and Open Source software was
leaked to me by a source who shall remain nameless. I annotated this
memorandum with explanation and commentary over Halloween Weekend and
released it to the national press. Microsoft was forced to
acknowledge its authenticity. The press rightly treated it as a major
story and covered it (with varying degrees of cluefulness).

The now-infamous "Halloween Document" contained references to a
second memorandum specifically on Linux. Within days, copies of the
second memo had been forwarded to me from two separate sources. I
renamed the first annotated version "Halloween I" and set about
annotating the second. While not as dramatic or sinister in its
implications as its predecessor, Halloween II includes a lot of
material at variance with Microsoft's public party line on Linux.

This page originally continued with an
anti-Microsoft jeremiad. On reflection, however, I think I'd
prefer to finish by thanking the principal authors, Vinod Valloppillil and Josh Cohen, for authoring such
remarkable and effective testimonials to the excellence of Linux and
open-source software in general. I suspect that historians may
someday regard the Halloween memoranda as your finest hour, and the
Internet community certainly owes you a vote of thanks.

Over time, these memoranda have grown into quite a series. The
Halloween Documents I, II, III, VII, VIII and X are leaked Microsoft
documents with annotations. IV is a satire based on an idiotic
lead-with-the-chin remark by the person who was at the time
Microsoft's anti-Linux point person; V is serious comment on a
statement by the same fool. VI is a takedown of one of the
bought-and-paid-for "independent studies" Microsoft marketing
leans on so heavily, IX refutes the Amended Complaint by
Microsoft's sock puppets at SCO, and XI is a field report from one
of Microsoft's marketing road shows. The common theme is that the
Halloween Documents reveal, from Microsoft's own words, the
things Microsoft doesn't want you to know.